#8 – Layouts and Design-Outs

We also took some of your advice (and some of our own) and veered back towards tech talk! Yay! And based on some other feedback we received, we also tried giving some more background on topics that might not be known to everybody. Hopefully we were understandable about any topics you might not have heard of before.

We’ll stick with the mostly-links format from last time, click on through to read about stuff we were gabbing on about!

Comments

Great episode. The point about layout people coming from a draughtsman background is quite true. At my first employer, the layout manager even hired people from a graphics design background. They learned the electrical part along the way, which did or did not work out well depending on the person.

On the next show, can you guys talk about the mechanics of your websites?

I’ve been thinking of putting up a site on projects I’ve done, share code, etc… but not sure how to get started! I’ve been looking at Google Sites, Square Space, Amazon EC2, Rackspace, but it’s a bit overwhelming!

Dave/Chris,
– Do you maintain the site yourselves? If so, what software/languages do you use?

– Do you run your own webserver? If not, what hosting provider do you use?

I’d definitely like a blog, rss type setup, where I can easily post projects without having to know the details of css, or html. A forum, would also be nice but not mandatory.

And what about bandwidth cost? If a hackaday or slashdot links to a project, I’ve read this can easily crash your site if it’s not ‘scalable’, and/or cost you hundreds of dollars in bandwidth!!

We probably won’t talk about this on the show but I can give a few tips here:

1.) Start small. A lot of companies are offering “unlimited bandwidth” for their lowest priced tiers.
2.) Dave and I both use WordPress blog front ends. These are based in PHP and sit on top of MySQL databases; but we rarely have to deal them them. We do our own CSS (theme) modification but usually use “1 click installs” that are offered from the host.
3.) The WP 1-click install is usually a feature of a “cPanel” a handy online interface that lets you see all of the tools available to you. Look for that in a host provider. Read reviews, I don’t want to bias anyone with an endorsement on here.
4.) Don’t worry about forums at first. Implement stuff as you need it.
5.) Unless you have some really great projects, don’t worry about getting Slashdotted. If you’re really worried, blog at one of the big institutions (i.e. WordPress.com). I think they’d be able to handle it.

Your trade-offs are going to be simplicity vs. features. If you’re truly new to web stuff, I’d go for the simple side of things. You might get overwhelmed and give up otherwise (as I did the first 20 times I tried web stuff). I’d even go so far as to suggest you start a WordPress.com blog first and just buy a custom domain name. Doesn’t get much simpler than that. You could do the same at blogger.com or any of the other blog sites out there. Either way, focus on getting the content first and the other stuff will come later. The only reason this site had fanciness at first is because we hosted it at our individual sites on the first few episodes and then decided to start it up.

My input wouldn’t be that valuable because I hand code all my HTML because I like the absolute control I have over page layout. I don’t have forums, instead I have a Yahoo Group.

The absolute advice I would give is that you should never NEVER ever post your regular email address on your blog site. That’s the up-side to getting your own domain is that you also get all the email addresses that come along with it.

I prefer “live bug” to dead bug, meaning that I bend up and flatten out the pins of the chip so that it can go flat on the board the right way up. That way I can read the part number later and I don’t get confused with the pinout and wire all the pins in a mirror image position.

For use at GHz frequencies, get some semi-rigid coax and solder it down on your live bug board wherever you need a transmission line. The Teflon insulation withstands soldering heat well, and you can get it in 0.141″, 0.085″, 0.034″ or 0.020″ outside diameter. With the smaller sizes you can solder it to the pins of dead-bugged LFCSP or MLF packages, and the outer conductor goes onto the paddle ground of the chip.